Jay Peters
Joanna Stern made an AI clone of herself.
She used it to prank Snap CEO Evan Spiegel, make a TikTok, and even spoof Chase’s voice biometrics. You really should watch her whole video about it. (She wrote about it, too.)
Jay Peters
Senior Reporter
Senior Reporter
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Jay Peters
The blue Pixel 7A looks really nice.
Leaker SnoopyTech has shared real-life photos of the blue and black Pixel 7A on Twitter. I desperately want to see the coral one. Also, maybe Google should announce this soon?
Jay Peters
The new Google DeepMind.
The Financial Times reported on some of the ways the previously-independent DeepMind will have to change now that Google has created the new Google DeepMind organization.
But it was not yet clear how the reorganisation would result in more ambitious commercial products, the people said. After all, DeepMind had never actively advocated the need to make money from its work. Those close to [Google DeepMind leader Demis] Hassabis argue that he understands now is the moment for change.
Jay Peters
Crypto transfers are coming to Venmo.
The new feature, which will start rolling out “over the coming weeks starting in May 2023,” will let you use Venmo to send crypto to others. You can already buy, store, and sell cryptocurrency in the app.
Introducing Crypto Transfers for Venmo Customers
[PayPal Newsroom]
Jay Peters
YouTube TV is bringing back multiview for the NFL Draft.
YouTube first tested the feature with March Madness, and now you’ll be able to use it while watching the NFL Draft, which begins at 8PM ET. This seems like yet another test ahead of the full NFL season, where it would make sense for YouTube to launch this feature in full.
Jay Peters
Amazon is working on an improved LLM to power Alexa.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, on Thursday’s Q1 2023 earnings call:
We’ve had a large language model underneath [Alexa], but we’re building one that’s much larger and much more generalized and capable. I think that’s going to really rapidly accelerate our vision of becoming the world’s best personal assistant. I think there’s a significant business model underneath it.
Just today, The Information reported that Apple is working on some LLM-based improvements for Siri. I’d guess Google is doing something similar for Assistant, but I’ve asked them if they can share any details.
Jay Peters
“This is our biggest single-day jump in new users that we’ve experienced.”
Bluesky has had a banner day, and it’s doing an emergency upgrade to handle the influx of new users. I’m already worried how I’m going to handle the five minutes of downtime — I haven’t been able to stop refreshing the app all day.
Update April 27th, 5:56PM ET: Bluesky made it through the downtime and is now back.
Screenshot by Jay Peters / The Verge
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